


to keep him warm

by betoning



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:30:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15061118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betoning/pseuds/betoning
Summary: “It doesn’t have to be that deep, idiot,” Bucky says, because he is in love and has nothing but sarcasm to defend himself with. “You could just wish for a shirt or something."Or: It's the 4th of July, and Bucky reminds Steve that it's okay to wish for things.





	to keep him warm

**Author's Note:**

> A week early but whatever.
> 
> The title is from Out of Order by Highasakite. I originally wanted to use the line in full ("I'll commit murder to keep him warm") because I almost ache with how perfectly I think it fits the Steve/Bucky dynamic, but in the end I felt like it would be too much of a Fall Out Boy-thing to do.

The apartment is quiet, subdued by the late hour. Steve has left some lights on, dimmed down to an orange glow that supposedly isn’t _Instagram-friendly_ but that holds far more semblance to a sunset than to a torture chamber disguised as an operation room. Bucky relaxes in it, and in the knowledge that both Steve and Jarvis have refused to make the rooms any lighter to accommodate Tony’s and Clint’s unprompted photo sessions over the past months.

There’s a lightness to his shoulders tonight. A worn feeling in his core that makes moving feel good, makes his chest feel full and straining around everything that it has carried for the past hour. He can feel his own weight, the glide of it along with the soles of his bare feet over the continuous wooden floor that washes out from hallway to hallway, flooding kitchen and living room in-between. The kitchen is cleared of the dishes from their dinner earlier this evening, the only traces left of the lasagne presumably stuffed into the fridge for another day, but there _are_ signs of life coming from the other side of the apartment. Soft music that trickles out of Steve’s room.

It’s not something that Bucky recognizes – probably a song from one of Sam’s playlist that are supposed to bring Steve and Bucky up to speed that Bucky only listens to if Steve has them on in the background of whatever they’re doing.

Surprisingly enough, Bucky has found himself more curious of the stuff that Tony has recommended to them; has settled into basslines and lyrics of bands like Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones when Steve’s been off on missions. More often than that, though, he just hums along to past-life melodies that Steve carefully sets loose over the speakers in the living room when Bucky is cooking dinner in the kitchen, as though they’re back in their shitty old shoebox of an apartment hoping that Steve will make it through another winter.

The tune that is playing now is gentle, like a shadow sneaking out to the hallway as though it’s reluctant to disturb the peace that the dim lighting is offering. Bucky drags his feet over the floor as he goes forward because he has found out lately that it’s something that he likes to do at home, something lazy and comfortable and entirely fucking noisy compared to how he’s spent the past decades sneaking around like he’s been his own, shadowy song. Something creepy taken out of a psychological thriller, sneaking up on the world and then tearing it apart.

The floor is warm and his feet are bare and it’s not _actually_ loud, but it’s enough to have alerted Steve of his presence when he finally reaches the doorway and leans against its frame. A smile is growing on Steve’s lips even before he’s starting to tilt his head up and connect their gazes, as though Bucky coming back home is still brand new and astounding in a reverently joyful kind of way. He seems to have no idea that Bucky hates leaving in the first place.

Steve’s smile is soft, but unguarded and bright in a way that blinds Bucky’s chest, makes it restrict around a crooked breath. The man is sat on his bed, the covers pooled around his waist and a newspaper spread out in front of him, proclaiming sport events to the room.

His voice is as soft as his smile, carrying warmth when it offers, “Hey.”

Bucky smiles back, with leftover amusement that stirs in his muscles and joins forces with the contentment that seeing Steve like this brings him. The doorframe can barely contain it, _him_ , like this.

Steve, undeterred by the lack of answer, adds, “That went faster than usual.”

“It barely went at all,” Bucky says, pushing himself off the doorframe and heading back out in the hallway towards his own room while continuing. “Barton decided to join us. It went alright for the first fifteen minutes – he didn’t make a sound. But then he fell asleep.”

“So?” Steve calls after him, into a silence that indicates that he has turned the music off.

“ _So_ ,” Bucky tells him, the room, the bed that must feel terribly lonely. “It turns out that it’s a bit hard to meditate with a grown man snoring loud enough to compete with a fucking airplane taking off in the corner. He talked in his sleep too – something about giant chickens and spun sugar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bruce laugh like that before.”

Bucky spends less time in here than he did when he first moved in. Back then it was a safe space, somewhere he could lock himself and his thoughts away and work through them alone, with a smaller risk of causing hurt to someone else in the long, tiring process. He’s never slept a full night in the bed – barely even naps on it these days because he prefers the couch for that. Prefers to be in the living area in general, with Steve’s day working as background noise and with himself in the centre of an open space, a clear view of the hallways and prepared for possible threats.

He grabs what he’s after from under one of the pillows, foregoing the blade that has made a home there and shuffling his way back across the short distance from door to door.

That distance used to be another source of comfort – how close it meant that he was to Steve at night during those first weeks. If he opened his door just a sliver he could hear every rustle of a sheet when Steve moved in his sleep, because Steve kept his own door open wide. Has never not trusted Bucky. Is still the same idiot that he used to be, though a healthier version whose body won’t fail him. Bucky never had enough time to wrap his mind around that fact before the train, and he hasn’t been settled in said mind for long enough now to be able to wrap it around much of anything.

Everything is a blur of past-life memories that are hard to piece together into a whole, and of emotions from then and now that cling to him and manifest themselves in everything that he does – in the way he can calm his own heartbeat from racing in reaction to everything but Steve, making Steve the easiest and hardest part all at once.

Steve’s grinning down at his own hands when Bucky looks back in; paper put aside on the nightstand and amusing hands resting lazily upon the cover between the outlines of his knees. Casual, comfortable, _at ease_ , just the way Bucky loves seeing him because it’s private, it’s _them_.

He has Steve’s attention a fraction of a moment later – blue eyes drinking him in and blinking gently at what they see. The smile’s still there, seemingly permanent as Steve observes, “Looks like it did you some good anyway.”

“It was fun,” Bucky nods. He steps further into the room, presses a knee to the side of Steve’s mattress and extends his hand, offers the gift that it carries, wrapped in old newspaper because it felt right, felt familiar. “It’s after midnight, and I thought – I think we used to do this, before. So, here. For you.”

The smile fades a little from Steve’s lips, a curious trace of wonder appearing in his eyes where he looks up at Bucky. He has already accepted the gift, is holding it in both hands while the knowledge within them both that Steve will accept anything Bucky can ever throw at him swells yet another size.

Nothing else seems to click quite right, though, so Bucky adds, “Happy birthday, Steve.”

Steve blinks once at Bucky, another time down at the present. “But I didn’t wish for anything.”

“I’m aware,” Bucky replies dryly, moving to throw himself down across the foot of the bed. “You’re supposed to wish for shit on your birthday though.”

He lies on his side, curling towards Steve’s body with Steve’s ankles and his own arm as a pillow. Steve’s feet don’t turn into icicles anymore, but he makes sure to cover them with his body anyway because old habits die hard and his in particular have been in and out of hibernation for decades – have slowly come back to life along with his memories, now, and are nestled in all of his instincts. The way Steve smiles privately in response to all of them hasn’t really given him a reason to put effort into changing that, into making himself think before he acts, so he doesn’t. He curls, and watches, and tries not to let the echo of sorrow sound too loudly in his own chest at the sight of it suddenly lining Steve’s face.

Steve has settled Bucky’s gift in his lap, and slowly lifts his gaze from it in order to aim it at Bucky again. His brow is furrowed, his lips slightly pursed with thought.

“I wished that I would get healthier, once. Strong enough to join the army and serve for my country,” he says slowly. Careful with those thoughts, with the way he words them. “But when it came true it lead us to the train – to me losing you. And _every_ _day_ after that I wished for you to come back to me, but I didn’t – I never wanted you to go through what you did in order for it to happen. My wishes coming through – however thrilled I am about it now – came with a price. And I don’t know if I’m prepared to see what happens a third time, ‘cause I mean… if something out there can fulfil wishes, then it must also be capable of misinterpreting them, right? And besides, I have everything I need right here.”

Bucky thinks that he can feel his own heart tremble – something insistent and shaky making its beats feel irregular and making his whole rib cage feel loose within his body. There’s too much to contain in there, too much adoration for this man and the way his mind works, the way care is rooted so deeply in everything he does.

“It doesn’t have to be that deep, idiot,” Bucky says, because he is in love and has nothing but sarcasm to defend himself with. “You could just wish for a shirt or something. Or for something entirely unselfish, if you seriously think that your wishes were what made me fall into Hydra’s hands.”

One corner of Steve’s mouth twitches upwards in what could possibly look like a pleasant enough smile to anyone who desperately wanted to move on from the subject, but Bucky knows better. Can sense the discomfort washing off of Steve in tall, harsh waves and feels a similar feeling blossom in his own chest when Steve’s gaze flickers and refuses to address Bucky properly. It’s happened less and less as the months have passed by, but the guilt flares up visibly within Steve every now and then. Bucky doubts that anything he says can ever put the embers of it out completely, but he won’t stop trying.

“Okay, _fine_ , let’s pretend you’re right,” Bucky huffs, leaning up on his elbow with Steve’s ankles trapped beneath the bridge of his arm. An attempt to be an anchor, to keep them both from drifting away from this. “Ever thought of turning it around, huh? Did you ever think that maybe your wish for me to come back to you was what made me survive it all – that I could have spent another who-knows-how-many decades being tortured and forced to kill people if it weren’t for your wishes?”

Steve’s gaze finally stills, then, aimed steadily at Bucky throughout those sentences and in the silence that follows. His eyes are wide with emotion – always unguarded and honest when they’re looking at Bucky. A spark of hope, there, as though he desperately wants to believe in the underlying meaning of Bucky’s suggestion – let himself trust that Bucky is glad to be here despite everything that he had to go through on the way.

Bucky breathes out a bit of fondness, shakes his head and reaches for Steve’s knee in order to shake that, too, while saying, “Now open the damn present, will you?”

It makes Steve snort, his smile finally returning in full force as his long fingers slip under the folds of paper and tape, pressing against old news and ripping them apart ungracefully. There’s a childlike enthusiasm there, a spark that Bucky usually only sees in Steve’s eyes that is suddenly spreading through muscular limbs and brightening the entire room a bit. More sunshine than fluorescent, and bringing warmth instead of pain.

His eyes – _those damn eyes_ – go round at the sight of what Bucky has wrapped up for him. Steve doesn’t cry often – doesn’t cry in reaction to this either but there’s definitely emotion brimming his lash lines. His bottom lip goes a bit slack under a stunned exhale, and Bucky simply smiles at him, at the unquestionable joy and gratitude that roams across Steve’s face.

A sketchpad and charcoal pencils, now with Steve’s thumbs running reverently across their packaging. The only thing that Bucky knows about those things is that Steve used to love them, but the woman in the store took pity on his confused state and guided him through aisles, helped him grab the very best that they had to offer, and smiled kindly at him through it all.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve murmurs, the very sound of happiness. “This is – it’s amazing. _Thank you_.”

“You used to draw all the time when you had the chance. When you had the supplies,” Bucky reminisces, trying not to let his smile go wistful around the words. “I don’t know how those memories came back to me, though, because I haven’t seen you with a pencil in your hand since I moved in here.”

He misses it, though, the sight of Steve curled around a sheet of paper with focus lining his entire body, thoughts lost upon his page. Once the memory of it appeared in Bucky’s mind he couldn’t shake it – only wishes that he had an updated version of it to refresh his memory with. Wishes that he could turn his head at any given time and find Steve caught up in something that he loves, something that he’s brilliant at that doesn’t come with collateral damage.

“You know, when I first met Sam he asked me what makes me happy,” Steve tells him. His eyelashes are terribly, heart-achingly long and delicate where they brush down towards the tops of his cheekbones, his entire face chiselled and familiar and _beautiful_. “I forgot about this – that _this_ does. That the days when I could draw away the hours with you moving around in the background were the best ones.”

Bucky grins. “It was an okay birthday present, then?”

It makes Steve nod solemnly, soft around the edges, “It’s great, Buck.”

Bucky aims his grin downwards, tucking it close against his own collarbone and arranging himself on the bed. Steve’s already opening the packaging and easing the supplies out on his lap to start drawing, and Bucky is going to allow himself to stay just this once, to gift himself with the sight that he has been so desperate for until now. A bit of past life normality.

He pushes Steve’s feet just a few inches to the side, bunches a lower corner of the cover up and uses it as a pillow, and settles in to the first few strokes of charcoal against paper. He doesn’t admit that it gives him goose bumps, he simply lets his eyes close and ends up drifting off into gentle sleep.

*

It was pretty late when he fell asleep, and it’s too fucking early when he wakes up, but it still means four hours’ worth of rest that haven’t been interrupted by nightmares; neither his nor Steve’s.

He’s warm, and the room is brighter than it was last night even though the bedside lamp is turned off and no orange glow is sneaking in from the hallway anymore. The sky is only just starting to crack with colour near a horizon that is ever so hidden behind skyscrapers. Steve has folded the length of the cover in half over Bucky at some point during the night, and is curled up sideways on the bare sheet, still asleep.

His sketchpad lies discarded on top of the newspaper on the nightstand, open to that first page that he started on earlier and covered in delicate, precise lines that make up Bucky’s face. Unmistakably Bucky – every single detail is just right and put down with care on that page, from his closed eyelids to the curve of his mouth and the hair that is tucked behind his hair. The last must have been Steve’s doing – the way he enjoys seeing Bucky’s face has been transparent since the first time Bucky wore it in a bun in Steve’s vicinity, away from everyone else that he still isn’t ready to be _that_ vulnerable around.

He eases himself out of the bed, careful not to wake Steve in the process. The urge to put the covers back over Steve’s body is overwhelming and makes his skin hurt with how badly he wants to rip out of it just to move, to reach out and do it, but he doesn’t want to risk it. Isn’t like Steve. Steve is the light compared to Bucky’s shadow, creeping in with soft and happy melodies in the romantic movies that leave everything brighter. He’s the only one who can tiptoe around Bucky’s slumbers and not crash right through that thin ice, not even with his touches.

The apartment is quiet, not yet lit up by the rising sun. Bucky moves through it to the kitchen, and starts preparing breakfast at the counters that overlook the living room and the large windows on the opposite wall, welcoming more light into his world. Smiles down at the pancake batter when the first few sleepy noises trickle out from Steve’s room. They land softly on top of the surfaces, make for good companionship until Steve follows in his physical form.

“Chocolate chip?” are the first words that come out of his mouth when he does. His hair is matted down against his left temple, though sticking up straight on the top of his head, and he’s peeking curiously over the countertop as he takes a seat on one of the stools there. The sketchpad is in his hands, placed gently before him by slim fingers that have already turned it to a blank page, and he conjures one of the pencils from behind his right ear.

Bucky bites back a smile and raises an eyebrow in response. “Yeah, well… don’t get used to it. It _is_ your birthday.”

Steve hums, smile bright and aimed right at Bucky when he says, “Best one in decades.”

A few minutes pass. Bucky moves over to the stove; Steve fills the silence up with his drawing. It feels like everything Bucky has ever known, like the source of his whole being or at least like the roots that he has stemmed from. It’s calming, and Bucky cherishes it while it lasts – knows that there’s no such thing as long-lasting tranquillity in a skyscraper full of Avengers.

“You plan on starting a cooking show or something?” Steve asks, though he’s still focused on his page. “Maybe a restaurant?”

Bucky snorts. “ _No_. I’m gonna join the team eventually, when I’m ready.”

“The cooking’s just for fun? You’re real good at it, Buck.”

“ _Everything’s_ good compared to what we used to eat, Steve,” Bucky points out, grinning along his shoulder, over at Steve. “Me cooking, though… it’s not something I could have ever imagined. I never even pictured a future beyond the army. I’m in it now though, and I _can_ spend my days watching cooking shows and I _can_ attempt to recreate every dish if I want to, and as long as I think it’s fun to wander around this apartment cooking food and reading books all day, I will. When I don’t anymore, I’ll move on. Shoot bad guys and save your stupid ass.”

“I have a great ass,” Steve retorts, and does look up this time, wiggling eyebrows that are just as stupid as his ass. There’s smugness written all over his pretty face and Bucky loves his mouth; how it looks and what it can say. “I’m the perfect specimen, remember?”

“No,” Bucky lies, “absolutely not. _Idiot_.”

He doesn’t know why it makes Steve smile at him so fondly, doesn’t understand what he’s doing right because if this is what being in love with Steve earns him then he doesn’t know why he has been berating himself for it for months, or why it seemed like such a stupid thing to be when he was thirteen and the realization first hit him.

*

Bucky talks a lot about balance with his therapist, about remembering to do things for himself sometimes. He tries to explain to her that oftentimes it’s the task of making Steve smile that makes _himself_ smile, that that’s always been a chain of events in his life that he’s not wanted to break away from. The other things – the cooking and the reading and the watching of documentaries about penguins – he’s figuring out in a much slower manner. Happiness is complex; so far it’s easier just to dig out a light blue shirt from the confines of his wardrobe and hope that this is another thing that will make Steve look at him as though he’s done something brilliant.

He usually wears all black. Black track pants and black hoodies and the occasional dark grey t-shirt. The light blue is uncomfortable – doesn’t make him happy at all – but he has a feeling that his therapist will be proud of him when he tells her about it next week.

He buttons it up, and rolls the sleeves up to the elbows. Straightens the collar, stood in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of his room, and decisively pulls on one of his skinniest pairs of black jeans to find it – the balance.

He likes the skinny ones. Prefers when the denim hugs the lines of his legs all the way from his thighs to his calves, because it feels like a second skin and it reminds him that there’s nothing but that – but fabric and skin – left that can contain him anymore. The denim he can rip apart with just his pinkies in less than a second at any given time; the skin he leaves alone even when ripping it open seems like it would be a relief.

It’s what fences in his affection, anyway. The hungry tug of it below the surface that would undoubtedly roam free if given the sliver of a chance to slip out – would cause destruction on its way to just let Steve _know_.

Steve’s shirt is dark blue and tight, enhancing the width of his shoulders and the lean lines of his waist. His hair’s messy, still, but in a more controlled way that makes him look younger, somehow, and the afternoon sun highlights the entirety of him where he’s leaning in over their kitchen table, adding another few lines to the drawing from this morning.

Bucky has seen glimpses of it during the day; has caught flashes of the progression from a rough outline to a flawless depiction of his own hands over the countertop, of flesh and metal and bits of chocolate where he was preparing their breakfast then.

They went running in the park an hour or so after they ate, but have since then been sat on the couch watching movies per Steve’s birthday request. It’s been Bucky’s favourite day since he stumbled up to an unsuspecting Steve on the street outside of the building half a year ago and asked for help, and the fact that he has to exchange it for Tony’s _fourth of July birthday extravaganza_ a few floors up makes him want to drive a knife into his thigh just to have a reason to stay home.

“Steve,” Bucky hums, shoving as much as he can of his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “You ready to go?”

He has Steve’s attention in a heartbeat, gaze landing softly and swiftly changing from curious to something else as it traces the length of Bucky’s body. It’s quick, and it’s hard to read, but it’s there and it’s related to what Bucky associates with Steve’s artistic focus – an apparent appreciation in the way it seems to be drinking in details.

Then Steve smiles at him, at the light blue of his shirt, and Bucky loses his breath. Suddenly regrets that he put half of his hair up in a bun because his cheeks feel warm and he would love to have something to hide behind. The loose strands at his temples hide nothing but parts of his ears, hide no affection at all, and he wonders how long Steve will stay oblivious for.

“I suppose I am,” Steve replies, straightening himself and then his shirt by running his palm along his chest and stomach. “Wanna bet on how long it takes until all of them are drunk and then sneak out of there before the fireworks start?”

If Bucky could – if he could allow himself, could ever believe that Steve could want it – he would have kissed Steve right then. Would have grinned against those lips and pressed his appreciation for everything that Steve is against them. He doesn’t, though. Can’t allow himself, has felt too much hopelessness over the past decades to have the guts to gamble with the last of his hope now. He presses a genuine smile to his own lips instead, and pulls Steve in by an arm over broad shoulders because he knows that that’s okay – that it’s something that they both want.

*

They get out of there a few minutes before midnight, just as the team’s first and probably-not-entirely-safe constructions go off and colour the sky in cheerful sparks. No one’s actually wasted yet, which Bucky is a bit sad about, but the fact that he and Steve are finally heading back down to their floor again weighs it out.

They kick their shoes off when they get inside, because Sarah Rogers used to berate them if they didn’t and Bucky keeps thinking that old habits die hard – that some shouldn’t die at all. Steve’s already undoing the top few buttons on his shirt and Bucky’s throat is dry around his words.

“Hey, it’s still your birthday,” is rasped out anyway, left between them along with his right arm where he grabs a gentle, halting hold of Steve’s upper arm. “One more thing?”

Steve’s brow furrows in confusion, but he nods anyway. Would go along with any plan Bucky could ever have because he’s a fucking idiot, and it’s landed them both in trouble countless times in the past. Bucky doesn’t even remember half of them.

“Come on,” he urges, and pulls Steve along into a kitchen that brightens slowly, a sunrise in the making to welcome them home.

He leaves Steve standing where he was this morning, near the countertop where there’s plenty of room for the cupcake that he made last night, decorated in blue frosting in-between pancakes this morning. Steve was too wrapped up in his drawing to notice – is looking at Bucky with those wide, amazed eyes again now, ever so surprised and amazed in reaction to everything Bucky does.

They keep a lighter in one of the top drawers. Bucky grabs it, sets the light he’s kept aside for days in the centre of the cupcake, and lights it up. The flame is small, and mirrored in Steve’s eyes when the man leans in closer to take a look, and Bucky watches intently. Breathes it all in. Hopes with his heart beating away from him that those long, beautiful eyelashes won’t somehow get caught and sizzle.

“Go on, then,” Bucky urges, soft the way his voice only gets around Steve. He steps in closer to Steve’s side, near enough that he can feel Steve’s warmth along the line of his own body. “Make a wish and blow it out.”

He’s not entirely sure if Steve will do it – almost changed his mind about this entire thing after Steve’s confession about wishes last night – but he’s hoping. Wants to see Steve long for something, set _his_ hope to something and have it come true because it’s the least he deserves. A little bit of a whole world that should be his.

Bucky looks at Steve and tries to put as much reassurance as he can into his own expression, in the slight raise of his eyebrows and the upwards curve of his mouth. Steve looks back as though he’s searching Bucky’s face for a sign of insincerity, but he doesn’t seem to find it. Bucky meant what he said last night, he doesn’t hold Steve responsible for anything that happened to him, and he hopes that Steve can see that.

Steve does look down at the cupcake again, then, and seems to inch his way closer until he suddenly raises his gaze once more, mischief lighting his eyes up. “You’re not gonna sing first?”

When Bucky’s response to that is a murmured _idiot_ along with an unimpressed glare, Steve just chuckles. Looks happy. Looks _beautiful_. And the ease of it lingers in the lines of his expression when he nods to himself, when he finally seems to set his mind on blowing the damn candle out – the remains of it where it’s burned down quickly in the shadow of Steve’s hesitation.

Steve looks at Bucky for another moment, the mischief dissipating in those blue eyes as something else takes its place. A flame of want; bright flecks of desire for _something_ that must mean that Steve _does_ have hope, _does_ have something in mind that he truly has set his hope to, and it all disappears behind Steve’s eyelids when he dips in close to blow the candle out. Is kept safe before Steve breathes it all out.

His eyelashes aren’t fried, though they remain pressed to the skin below Steve’s eyes for a long moment, after, as though past ghosts of fear have come back to grab at him now that the moment has passed and the deed is done. It’s as though he expects Bucky to be gone when he opens his eyes again.

Bucky hasn’t moved an inch, though. Is stood with his heart yearning in his chest and his fingertips itching to reach out and touch, to brush beneath those eyes and watch Steve watch him back when he finally feels brave enough to look.

“You did it, huh?” he asks quietly, smiling just a little at the way Steve’s body twitches with surprise. “Risked being misinterpreted?”

Steve meets his gaze, so open and gentle in the way he lets Bucky see him, see through his defences. There’s a bit of self-deprecation lining his lips and their slight smile, but his shoulders don’t slump and nothing about his posture speaks of embarrassment in relation to what he just did or the struggle he’s gone through to get there.

“I just want you to be happy, Bucky,” he says, shrugging those confident shoulders. “If that backfires – if something has to happen to _me_ in order for that to happen – then I’m fine with it. I know it’s not something I can plan.”

“What – _no_ ,” Bucky blurts, suddenly so confused that it hurts. “Nothing can happen to – there’s no happiness without you, Steve. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my long fucking life it’s that. You make _everything_ better.”

He looks at Steve, always. Has been staring at that man for the majority of his two lifetimes and it’s still not enough, can’t ever be when Steve offers up these new expressions of hope and wonder that take Bucky’s breath away. Bucky’s confession seems to have knocked a bit of air out of Steve as well, because the entire room feels frozen – nothing moving or sounding or understanding for a moment.

_If something has to happen, Steve’s fine with it as long as it makes Bucky happy._ That’s what lingers in Bucky’s mind; not at all a sign that Steve wants Bucky to kiss him, but the closest thing to it that Bucky will ever get. A go ahead. A sliver of a chance that won’t be there forever.

He ponders it for a moment, stood in front of a Steve that still looks frozen in his amazement, in the aftermath of hearing that he makes Bucky happy as though it’s that important to him, and Bucky thinks that a kiss can’t be _that_ bad. That being kissed by Bucky can’t be the worst possible brand of backfire that Steve could have imagined when he made that wish – because he did. _He wished for Bucky to be happy_.

It’ll be a kind of torture too, of course. Something close to his final, emotional death when Steve pushes him away. An end to feeling, dotted with Steve’s excuses. But before that there will be bliss.

He inches his feet forward until his toes touch Steve’s, sock meeting sock upon shiny, supportive floor. Then he tilts Steve’s face up by a gentle index finger under the chin, and fits his bottom lip in-between Steve’s where they’re still parted in joyful surprise. When there he presses forward, kisses Steve’s upper lip and savours it, counting the seconds because he’ll want to remember it later, the length of happiness, the way seconds can feel like an eternity when it’s all you’ve ever dreamt of.

The last thing he expects is for Steve to kiss back. For the world to fade away and himself to be held as though it’s only in this very moment that Steve realizes that he has gotten Bucky back.

Steve does, though. Steve kisses him back, and it’s like the spark that sets everything on fire, makes Bucky’s skin burn and his blood boil in its rush to keep up with the rapid beating of his heart. Steve starts kissing back and it goes from a chaste theft to a passionate offering of the entire world, of every dream imaginable suddenly landing in Bucky’s hands, against his chest and upon his lips.

He feels dazed when they part. Leans back a mere couple of inches and spends moments upon moments watching and being watched. Steve’s eyes are big, his pupils dark with emotion, and they’re both breathing heavily, inhaling each other’s air while the rest of the apartment remains silent. Unfazed by the collision that’s happened, the cosmic change that is about to occur in reaction.

Bucky’s left hand has ended up at the curve of Steve’s waist, thumb still ruffling the shirt there where it’s rubbing absent-minded circles into hidden flesh. He takes another breath, blinking through the realization of what he just did, of what just happened, but is met with resistance when he tries to take a step back. There’s a tug near his middle, keeping him still.

Lowering his gaze, he sees Steve’s hand fisted in the front of his own shirt where it’s holding on so tightly that the knuckles have gone white. If Bucky had been more forceful in his attempt to move he’s sure that the front of his shirt would have stayed behind in Steve’s grip.

Steve’s looking down at his own hand, too. His brows are tilted inwards as though he’s bewildered by his own actions – as though he didn’t consciously decide to fist the fabric and hold on. Something about it makes the crowd of emotions in Bucky’s chest disperse a little; his shoulders fall when he breathes out slowly and the tension that he carried just before the kiss becomes something lighter, a nervousness that he doesn’t mind feeling.

He moves the hand that’s not on Steve’s waist and brushes his thumb over Steve’s knuckles, runs it down over Steve’s fingers to gently remove them from the shirt and fit his own in-between them instead. Gives them that to hold on to when he assures, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve exhales shakily at that, emotion turning his attempt at humour into something raw and honest; “Not without me, right? I’ve heard that before.”

Steve doesn’t acknowledge what he’s been through very often – is so focused on being there for Bucky that he might even forget it at times – but it remains at the forefront of Bucky’s mind, playing a part of every nightmare and spiking up his guilt when it claws its way in unannounced on the bad days. Beyond the blame that Steve puts on himself for Bucky’s fall, there’s a loss that Steve never had enough time to deal with before Bucky was suddenly there again, making it worse and better at the same time. Watching all of those emotions play up in Steve’s expression now feels like falling all over again, off a train and into love at the same time. Terrifying and irrevocable – Bucky never did go away on purpose, and he never will.

“I meant it when I said it,” he says. Nudges Steve’s toes with his own because they’re still touching, still stuck in place upon a floor that encourages their gravitational pull and the way they don’t fall anywhere but into each other these days. “I mean it now. Not without you, not as long as you want me around.”

Steve’s bottom lip trembles. He licks it. Smiles crookedly when he realizes that Bucky tracks that movement with his gaze, then says, “I’ll always want you around, Bucky. I – _god_. I guess – since you kissed me, that I can –”

“I love you,” Bucky cuts in. “I’ve been in love with you since 1930.”

It makes Steve stop breathing – Bucky can feel the halted movement against his palm when he moves it backwards to press Steve closer by the spine. Steve’s whole face lights up in a smile more breathtaking than all the ones he’s aimed at Bucky in the past, and then his lungs start working a heartbeat later and he breathes out a relieved hum of, “Yeah, _that_. I can say that I love you. Because I do. Love you.”

“Smooth.”

“Fuck off,” Steve grins, pink-cheeked and beautiful. “You already know that I’m an idiot.”

A part of Bucky wants to go with the joke; tie it back to Steve’s ass and how great it is the way they did this morning, but his heart is bigger than that part. His heart runs his entire body, his unfathomable affection for said idiot who just keeps smiling at him, so he smiles back. A mirrored idiot. Fool in love. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to stop looking, stop himself from anything, but right now he doesn’t have to so he shakes his hand out of Steve’s and brings it up to Steve’s cheek.

It’s soft, framed by sharp bones, and warm against the pads of his fingers. He can feel Steve lean his head into the touch and has to swallow hard, has to take a moment to comprehend the trust that Steve holds for him, the certainty that Bucky has no intention but to love him.

Steve’s grin fades little by little as the seconds tick on, though the emotion stays in his eyes along with an affection so piercing that Bucky struggles to breathe under the weight of it. He brushes his thumb over Steve’s cheekbone one last time, forces out a _fuck_ under his shallow breath before he dips in to kiss Steve again, already too late. Should have done it ages ago. They should never have stopped.

And judging by the way Steve leans his whole weight against Bucky’s chest now, they won’t.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone actually made it down here; thank you so much for reading this. And sorry for the lack of smut, I had intended for there to be some but when I actually reached that point of the story it didn't feel right. I guess I'll save that scene for another time.


End file.
